Longline and trawl fisheries kill hundreds of thousands of seabirds annually as bycatch, threatening multiple albatross and petrel species with extinction.
Seabirds that dive or swoop on baited hooks become caught and drown. The death is not immediate for birds that become entangled on lines as the hooks and weights pull them underwater. Albatrosses are particularly vulnerable because they follow fishing vessels over vast oceanic distances and raise only a single chick every two years, making population recovery from bycatch mortality extremely slow.